Stratastencil

09May09

Javan Ivey is an animator and director noted for creating the stratastencil technique throughout motion and animation design communities online (I recommend you take a look at his work around his website, he has had me hypnotised!)

Here he explains what ‘stratastencil’ is, and offers his experiment to demonstrate the technique titled ‘My Paper Mind’ [link to quoted text can be found at Javan Ivey’s blog, here]

An experimental animation exploring the “Stratastencil” technique that I’ve devised. Inspired by the Stratacut technique, Stratastencil is an additive process. Stratacut removes material to reveal another layer, while this technique adds another layer while still showing the layer before it.

I was immediatley drawn to the technique, moreso of the paper’s physical properities which allowed the animator to compose his illusion of movement through cutting and cropping of multiple layers. It is a technique that can be easily manipulated, for instance, placing larger sized stencils outdoors and shooting via stop motion against a live environment, or having people interact with these stenciled animations in every frame, similar to Sony Bravia’s Play Doh commercial, found here. There must be plenty of ideas to choose from! Unfortunately, it is not the quickest way of working, unless you have a team of people assisting you, thus a team effort. Elliot Jokelson directed an advertisement for the Bannaroo music and arts festival using the stratatstencil technique:

He worked with 30 people on the production of this video. If you don’t believe me, take a look at the making-of video and credits, here [Javan Ivey’s making-of video can be found here]

It did not deter me from attempting this technique, however, learning to ‘work within our means’ from the Robert Violet project at the beginning of the year, my use of repetition proved useful. The experiments will be shown in the following posts.